Christmas Trilogy 2020 Part 3: The peregrinations of Johannes K

We know that human beings have been traversing vast distances on the surface of the globe since Homo sapiens first emerged from Africa. However, in medieval Europe it would not have been uncommon for somebody born into a poor family never in their life to have journeyed more than perhaps thirty kilometres from their place of birth. Maybe a journey into the next larger settlement on market day or perhaps once a year to an even larger town for a fair on a public holiday. This might well have been Johannes Kepler’s fate, born as he was into an impoverished family, had it not been for his extraordinary intellectual abilities. Although he never left the Southern German speaking area of Europe (today, Southern Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic), he managed to clock up a large number of journey kilometres over the fifty-eight years of his life. In those days there was, of course, no public transport and in general we don’t know how he travelled. We can assume that for some of his longer journeys that he joined trader caravans. Traders often travelled in large wagon trains with hired guards to protect them from thieves and marauding bands and travellers could, for a fee, join them for protection. We do know that as an adult Kepler travelled on horseback but was often forced to go by foot due to the pain caused by his piles.[1]

It is estimated that in the Middle ages someone travelling on foot with luggage would probably only manage 15 km per day going up to perhaps 22 km with minimal luggage. A horse rider without a spare mount maybe as much as 40 km per day, with a second horse up to 60 km per day. I leave it to the reader to work out how long each of Kepler’s journeys might have taken him.

Johannes Kepler Source: Wikimedia Commons

Johannes’ first journey from home took place, when he attended the convent-school in Adelberg at the age of thirteen, which lies about 70 km due west of his birthplace, Weil der Stadt, and about 90 km, also due west of Ellmendigen, where his family were living at the time.

Adelberg Convent Source: Wikimedia Commons

His next journey took place a couple of years later when he transferred to the Cistercian monastery in Maulbronn about 50 km north of Weil der Stadt and 30 west of Ellmendingen.

Maulbronn Monastery Source: Wikimedia Commons

Finished with the lower schools in 1589, he undertook the journey to the University of Tübingen, where he was enrolled in the Tübinger Stift, about 40 km south of Weil der Stadt.

The Evangelical Tübinger Stift on the banks of the Neckar Source: WIkimedia Commons

Johannes’ first really long journey took place in 1594, when on 11 April he set out for Graz the capital city of Styria in Austria to take up the posts of mathematics teacher in the Lutheran academy, as well as district mathematicus, a distance of about 650 km. The young scholar would have been on the road for quite a few days.

Graz, Mur und Schloßberg, Georg Matthäus Vischer (1670) Source: Wikimedia Commons

Although he only spent a few years in Graz, Kepler manged at first to stabilise his life even marrying, Barbara Müller, and starting a family. However, the religious conflicts of the period intervened and Kepler, a Lutheran Protestant living in a heavily Catholic area became a victim of those conflicts. First, the Protestants of the area were forced to convert or leave, which led to the closing of the school where Kepler was teaching and his losing his job. Because of his success as astrologer, part of his duties as district mathematicus, Kepler was granted an exception to the anti-Protestant order, but it was obvious that he would have to leave. He appealed to Tübingen to give him employment, but his request fell on deaf ears. The most promising alternative seemed to be to go and work for Tycho Brahe, the Imperial Mathematicus, currently ensconced in the imperial capital, Prague, a mere 450 km distant.

Prague in the Nuremberg Chronicle 1493 Source: Wikimedia Commons

At first Kepler didn’t know how he would manage the journey to Prague to negotiate about possible employment with Tycho. However, an aristocratic friend was undertaking the journey and took Johannes along as a favour. After, several weeks of fraught and at times downright nasty negotiations with the imperious Dane, Kepler was finally offered employment and with this promise in his pocket he returned to Graz to settle his affairs, pack up his household and move his family to Prague. He made the journey between Graz and Prague three times in less than a year.

Not long after his arrival in Prague, with his family, Tycho died and Kepler was appointed his successor, as Imperial Mathematicus, the start of a ten year relatively stable period in his life. That is, if you can call being an imperial servant at the court of Rudolf II, stable. Being on call 24/7 to answer the emperor’s astrological queries, battling permanently with the imperial treasury to get your promised salary paid, fighting with Tycho’s heirs over the rights to his data. Kepler’s life in Prague was not exactly stress free.

1608 saw Johannes back on the road. First to Heidelberg to see his first major and possibly most important contribution to modern astronomy, his Astronomia Nova (1609), through the press and then onto the book fair in Frankfurt to sell the finished work, that had cost him several years of his life. Finally, back home to Prague from Frankfurt. A total round-trip of 1100 km, plus he almost certainly took a detour to visit his mother somewhere along his route.

Back in Prague things began to look rather dodgy again for Kepler and his family, as Rudolf became more and more unstable and Johannes began to look for a new appointment and a new place to live. His appeals to Tübingen for a professorship, not an unreasonable request, as he was by now widely acknowledged as Europe’s leading theoretical astronomer, once again fell on deaf ears. His search for new employment eventually led him to Linz the capital city of Upper Austria and the post of district mathematicus. 1612, found Johannes and his children once again on the move, his wife, Barbara, had died shortly before, this time transferring their household over the comparatively short distance of 250 km.

Linz anno 1594 Source: Wikimedia Commons

Settled in Linz, Kepler married his second wife, Susanna Reuttinger, after having weighed up the odds on various potential marriage candidates and the beginning of a comparative settled fourteen-year period in his life. That is, if you can call becoming embroiled in the Thirty Years War and having your mother arrested and charged with witchcraft settled. His mother’s witchcraft trial saw Johannes undertaking the journey from Linz to Tübingen and home again, to organise and conduct her defence, from October to December in 1617 and again from September 1620 to November 1621, a round trip each time of about 1,000 km, not to forget the detours to Leonberg, his mother’s home, 50 km from Tübingen, from where he took his mother, a feeble woman of 70, back to Linz on the first journey.

In 1624, Johannes set out once again, this time to Vienna, now the imperial capital, to try and obtain the money necessary to print the Rudolphine Tables from Ferdinand II the ruling emperor, just 200 km in one direction. Ferdinand refused to give Kepler the money he required, although the production of the Rudolphine Tables had been an imperial assignment. Instead, he ordered the imperial treasury to issues Kepler promissory notes on debts owed to the emperor by the imperial cities of Kempten, Augsburg and Nürnberg, instructing him to go and collect on the debts himself. Kepler returned to Linz more than somewhat disgruntled and it is not an exaggeration that his life went downhill from here.

Kepler set out from Linz to Augsburg, approximately 300 km, but the Augsburg city council wasn’t playing ball and he left empty handed for Kempten, a relatively short 100 km. In Kempten the authorities agreed to purchase and pay for the paper that he needed to print the Rudolphine Tables. From Kempten he travelled on to Nürnberg, another 250 km, which he left again empty handed, returning the 300 km to Linz, completing a nearly 1,000 km frustrating round trip that took four months.

In 1626, the War forced him once again to pack up his home and to leave Linz forever with his family. He first travelled to Regensburg where he found accommodation for his family before travelling on to Ulm where he had had the paper from Kempten delivered so that he could begin printing, a combined journey of about 500 km. When the printing was completed in 1627, having paid the majority of the printing costs out of his own pocket, Kepler took the entire print run to the bookfair in Frankfurt and sold it in balk to a book dealer to recoup his money, another journey of 300 km. He first travelled back to Ulm and then home to his family in Regensburg, adding another 550 km to his life’s total. Regensburg was visited by the emperor and Wallenstein, commander in chief of the Catholic forces, and Kepler presented the Tables to the Emperor, who received them with much praise for the author.

In 1628, he entered the service of Wallenstein, as his astrologer, moving from Regensburg to Wallenstein’s estates in the Dutchy of Sagan, yet another 500 km. In 1630, the emperor called a Reichstag in Regensburg and on 8 October Kepler set out on the last journey of his life to attend. Why he chose to attend is not very clear, but he did. He journeyed from Zagan to Leipzig and from there to Nürnberg before going on to Regensburg a total of 700 km. He fell ill on his arrival in Regensburg and died 15 November 1630.

Regensburg Nuremberg Chronicle 1493 Source: Wikimedia Commons

The mathematical abilities of the young boy born to an impoverish family in Weil der Stadt fifty-eight-years earlier had taken him on a long intellectual journey but also as we have seen on a long physical one, down many a road.

 

[1] I almost certainly haven’t included all of the journeys that Kepler made in his lifetime, but I think I’ve got most of the important ones. The distances are rounded up or down and are based on the modern distances by road connecting the places travelled to and from. The roads might have run differently in Kepler’s day.